


in love & death (we don’t decide)

by eveningiwillnotforget



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Corruption, King!George, Kissing, M/M, Prison Visit, also a little angsty guys, bloodvines!george, dreamnotfound, god + king AU, god!dream, just saying, maybe it's a possession arc though hmm, smp!dnf, this is very not canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29338185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eveningiwillnotforget/pseuds/eveningiwillnotforget
Summary: “As if you’d need protection from me, George. I protectyou, I’m the reas-...”A moonlit palm goes up, ceasing his words.“You’re the reason I’ve been taken from here, so many times I stopped counting.”_________or: Dream has always been carless about getting what he wanted. Within George, the World finds a way to make him pay.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80





	in love & death (we don’t decide)

**Author's Note:**

> i blacked out and bled this destruction, whoops. inspiration goes to technoblacle on tumblr (towerofthegods on ao3 - read their stuff immediately please) for their amazing god & king take of dnf, a bloodvines!george ask, and my brain just spiraling and spitting this out. first time in the fandom, all of this is very _not_ canon!
> 
> as with many other on here, should any cc’s become uncomfortable with this type of work, this will come down. otherwise, enjoy! x
> 
> tw: very mild blood mentions

  
_He should be in conversation with Hades._

A mirthless laugh sounds against the obsidian structure, deep and dark and depthless. Swallowed by the careful flow of lava, ever defying physics as Dream eyes it from across his cage. _Home?_ Who even knew anymore, clock shattered in his palm and Time a creature of his own making. He could reverse it, if he wanted to. He could wind it back and fix his mask and his _mistake_ , send his comrades to the brink. Send his traitors to their grave. He could, truly, do so much.

But in essence, what would come of that?  
He was a God, after all. This sentence was as humorous as it was humbling.

So he plays his _part_. Takes punishment as his holy communion, speaks prophecies under his tongue, drips anguish from his lips when visitors approach in trepidation. Toys with the jagged ceramic edges across his face, blood slicked on fingertips he molts into the flames in solidarity.

He is innocent in theory; a prisoner stripped of his power, left to document the history of his demise.  
He is caustic in application; eyes bleary and flickering, smirk taunting at the turn of one’s back.

One by one they may step from the platform, watch the walls rise once again, and think he’s found some sort of remorse. Tommy may knit his brow and shutter relief through his ribs, Bad may add to his wishlist of trinkets and consolations. Ranboo may remember to forget it all. False promises, held close to their chest to make them feel something.

Lying to themselves, again and again, in the name of redemption and the loss of a friend.  
This was not _Dream_ , they would stutter. _But it was_.

Always had been, as the origin story would say. He’d ripped the pages of his past out many moons ago, sick with all that power.

Consuming, unending, unyielding.  
Much like the search he’d began the moment he ended up here.

Binary code flicks beneath his eyelids, braced against the back wall in concentration as the lava burbled on. Coordinates and kill commands and _0101101_ , stripping the foundation of his work to raid the server logs, shift the biomes and hear the whispers and shift again and see the reply and _ah, there he is_.

Sifting through location lines, braces and brackets and the backslash of a smile on Dream’s lips as he turns it all upside down. Manipulates the X and Y axis, opening his lawless eyes to shift the last coordinates a few degrees from those scribbled on paper in his palm.

One look at his books that should read like a manifesto only read latitudes and longitudes, scratched out one by one over time. Perilous and angry at the world for keeping its first secret from him: where exactly in it he existed right now. 

Dream blinks, _confirms_. Settles. Waits.  
Feels the ground beneath him shutter, palms flowing bright with betrayal.

He’d failed, once again.

Above him, the Overworld falls into night, blood vines rolling further across its landscape.

________________

The concept of Time is an abused theory when Dream finally gets it right.

One too many notes on deception, of drawbridges revealing faces he’d rather not be faced with, of clocks wound backward and reluctant sighs from the prison guard upon replacement.

Everyone assumed he’d gone mad, at this point. They were naive to think he wasn’t mad to begin with.

Especially now, up toiling in this late ( _early?_ ) hour, studying his latest command before execution. The last time he’d done this he swore the lava shifted right behind the deep expanse of his wall, as if something with gravity had plummeted in and burned away just out of his grasp. Inverting the direction of his teleport prompt, letters heavy in his mind as he spells out a name once again, tosses his mask on the floor next to him.

Blinks. Breathes.  
Hears the sharp pattern of footsteps tripping to life a few feet in front of him.

 _George_.

Goggles haphazardly tucked against his collar, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes snapped shut but _here_.  
Alive. He’d done it.

A triumphant smile surfaces on Dream’s lips for a moment, falling sharply once George’s gaze cuts across him.

“Your eyes, George.” Irises glowing red, warning signals firing as the stare holds.

“Your persistence, Dream.”

 _God_ , it feels like lifetimes since he’s heard his voice.

Something shifts in his chest at the thought, throat cloying with bitten back memories as George regards him. The small room, the flicker of lava, eyes vivid and wide and maybe even _frightening_. Everything he shouldn’t be to this world.

His body churns in rage, fists furling. “What has happened to you?”

The response is curious. George’s dark brows furrow in confusion, head tilting to the side, neck sloping gently against his shoulder. As if he should already know the answer, as if the explanation for his glowing gaze ( _was it fading now?_ ), the bleached speckles of his t-shirt, were as obvious as the air he sucked in out of habit.

“I made a deal.”

Dream chokes.

Had George followed in his footsteps? Had he tethered his soul to eternal chaos? The thought alone has him surging forward, desperate to shake his shoulders and beg him to reconsider.

Grateful he can mask the hurt when George steps back in tandem, keeping them parallel. War trenches, held quietly at bay.

“To become a God?” He sputters, suddenly meeting eyes that felt familiar. Depthless, dark for the right reasons.

“To save me from one.”

It’s quiet, tucked under his tone, but Dream swears it echoes in this chamber, in his ears. Pain spilling across his shoulders and down his chest before it cauterizes, warps into fury. Into greed.

“As if you’d need protection from me, George. I protect _you_ , I’m the reas-...”

A moonlit palm goes up, ceasing his words.

“You’re the reason I’ve been taken from here, so many times I stopped counting.”

Dream didn’t notice the vines until now.

It’s as if fault lines unfurled from the wingtips of George’s footsteps, glowing red against the purple bruises of obsidian. Snarled and thick and paved with thorns, _barbed wire in their barracks_ , Dream stilling where he stood.

“The first time it happened, I thought it was just a glitch. I reached down to pick a flower and suddenly I was in the tundra, nowhere near my home.”

 _Our home_ , beats like a foreign concept in Dream’s mind, a rebuttal he can’t force off his tongue. Community had been lost in definition so long ago; destruction and betrayal seemed better summaries of what had been accomplished here. There. Wherever it was.

George carries on before him, a poppy spawning under the heel he’d spun from. Dream watches it blossom, then char in an instant.

“But then it happened again. And again. And _again_.” His voice softens, eyes all but molten at whatever memory he’d pulled from the depths. An edge of a ravine, maybe, one block away from his demise. The weight of lost autonomy, maybe, structure slipping through his fingers. “I figured it out, eventually, but how could I have stopped you?”

“Well, you could have visited me, for one.”

“And denied you the satisfaction of success? As if you wouldn’t have started over the moment I left.”

He’s right, Dream smirking in admittance as he tests another step. Watches a vine wind at his ankle, press into his skin in censure.

George’s eyes a warning in their own right, glowing again as leaves crackled and burned in the wake of his sudden pacing. Agony, rushing from his mouth.

“I spawned so deep in the ocean once I thought I was going to drown. There was no one, _nothing_ around. I barely remember coming up for air, or finding the shore.”

Dream’s eyebrows shoot up, assuming there’d be dolphins or a wayward current that would carry him away from harm. Built into the world of the server, its very _core_ : protect George at all costs.

The very core he’d been callously ripping apart these days, trying to drag George to the depths with him.

The realization seems to dawn on them both, George offering an eventual solution.

“The next time it happened, I crashed through all these blood vines, fell right in front of this...Egg, I think it’s called now. And I felt _safe_ , for the first time in so long. Knew that it could... _help_ me, almost.”

He’s tripping over words, all delicate features and suffering syllables, while Dream’s eyes trace the pale column of throat that slices out beneath wrinkled cotton. Barely putting any mind to this foreign entity, discovering his body still recalls the taste of the skin beneath his jawline.

Remembers salt flecks and freesia.

He thought he’d lost that, long ago.

“So I took the chance, and when you got _close_ , when I kept falling into the lava, when the only thing I could do was burn...it would bring me back. A little less me, but I’d be back.”

Dream’s head cocks at this, unable to fight back the concern. “What does that mean?”

George gestures to his palms, finally stepping closer to grasp at one.

The thorns in his ankle subside.  
The pulse of Dream’s heart does not.

“I exist here now.” He traces the curved lines of calloused hands, flicks his thumb absently against his wrist. “Every time you killed me, pieces of me fled through your veins.”

Gaining power from each wayward attempt.  
Losing George and finding him, simultaneously.

He tangles their hands together in silence, drowns in the proximity that had been allowed. It felt _right_ , as much as it felt at odds with their reality. Glitching green eyes and orbs tinged with maroon, suddenly inscrutable.

“I’ll always bring you back, you know.” Dream murmurs, voice thick with something he’d rather not reflect on.

George hesitates in front of him. Leans forward an inch, presses into their touch...then finds his senses, pealing away. 

Smokey petals singe the air, sweet and burning.

“You don’t have to, anymore. The world’s figured out how to do it on his own.”

“In exchange for your soul? Siphoned little by little, but _you_ , George! Who are you without that?” 

The last thing he expects is a laugh, that _mocking_ sound, flowing from lips he used to recited psalms against in the dark.

“I don’t know, Dream. Who would I be?”

And then it _clicks_.

A little too late, staggering back against the wall in horror.

Doused in holy water, all sweet and full of promises.  
Now drowning in hell fire, all revelations and contempt.

“Me. You’d be in me. I’d lose you.”

George’s expression morphs into something decidedly not _him_ , pushing the theory further with the tilt of a grin.

“The _impasse_ of immortality. It’s funny, isn’t it?” Too calm, too controlled, Dream wavering between fear and fury as the haunted smile on George’s lips surges. “You’ve always loved that power. You’d never say it aloud but I _knew_ you, Dream. The moment you stopped treating me like porcelain, I knew there was some failsafe in this deity of yours.”

_Was he too late already?_

Vines burst across the block floors, scale the walls.

“So the world gave me one of its own. _Forever_. Your choice on if it’s the ghost of me in this body or not.”

_Was this even real?_

_Yes_ , his mind stokes.  
He’d felt it before. Refused to acknowledge what it was in the wake of getting what he wanted.

Greed, guilty and blinding.  
His _attachment_ , suddenly the biggest liability in a world with no equilibrium.

Dream barely has time to recalibrate before he’s consumed, humanity snaking back into his body. Caught in a landslide of _before_ , of fresh land and fresh love and fragility.

“What have you done, George?” His voice suddenly hoarse, straining as it returns from its ruin. _I loved you, where are you, what have you become?_

“What I had to.” Flat affect, distilled in finality. _I loved you, you did this, but I’m sorry anyway._

Eyes catching across the room, haphazard and _human_ for the briefest of moments.

It’s all Dream needs.

Blood vines crunch under his shaking footsteps, crossing the room and reaching for George and feeling tendrils wrap around his elbow, wrenching it to his side.

One hand now tangled in vines, the other tugging at his sharp jawline, lips meeting in some form of haphazard forgiveness.

George kisses like a bullet train. Think gunmetal. Think grace.  
Dream kisses like he’s careful. Think stem thorns. Think rose salve.

Drinking each other in like red wine, like the beginning when there’d been nothing to come between them. When power hadn’t invaded, when he had yet to become more than himself and it was just them and the world and love, protection, eternal bliss. 

How far they’d fallen now, eyes flickering green, red, brown, _forever_ , _never again_.

Tearing away when they could barely breathe anymore, ribs rattling in cages and gazes spellbound.

Watching, in cruel clarity, as the God flickered in and out of Dream.  
Watching, in harsh reality, the redness tousle and take from George.

Crimson finally drenching through his eyes in perpetuity, a new being in this aftermath.

“You may be a God,” George starts, voice hollow and deep, now depthless for the wrong reasons, “but you no longer hold my Conviction.”

Dream blinks, _confirms_ , a set of coordinates of the near past, hearing the lava crackle in front of him. Sees a trail of ash and burnt petals swirling in his wake.

He doesn’t know who’s lost more, at this point.  
But he’s comforted that the shattered soul that flits into his body is pure.

________________

Many moons later, eyelids flicker with command prompts. With silent longing, with the coordinates now burned into his memory.

Blinks. Breathes. Settles. Waits.

Finds the definition of finality in the World’s response to him.

_[404] NOT FOUND._

What becomes of a God, without any will to use his power?

**Author's Note:**

> ok this was quite dark but a little bit corrupted george was an angle I thought it’d be interesting to explore. sorry to your soul! had a fun time with this (very out of canon) bit though - comments appreciated and any questions, happy to answer below! grammar is my enemy. as is sleep. xoxo.


End file.
